Nordic publications made available for free

Publisert 25.03.2014

The Nordic Council of Ministers launches a new portal where all its publications are made available for free.

The Nordic Council of Ministers Secretary and seven of its institutions (Nordic Innovation, NordForsk, Nordic Energy Research, Nordic School of Public Health, Nordicom, Nordregio and Nordic Centre for Welfare and Social Issues) has developed a new portal for publications.

The portal is run by Uppsala University Library, and contains about 3.000 publications at the time of launch. From now on, all publications financed and published by the Nordic Council of Ministers will be available through the portal.

Free access for allThe portal, which is developed using Open Source software, is related to a new Open Access mandate by the Council secretary general Dagfinn Høybråten.

The mandate requires all publications published and financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers, which Nordic Innovation is part of, are published with Open Access, i.e. free for everyone to download.

Sending a signalThis sends a strong signal to the rest of the world that the Nordic region supports democratic principles like transparency and equality, both in words and actions.

– Via its projects and institutions, the Nordic Council of Ministers is strongly committed to knowledge development across a broad front. Open Access allows us to make this breadth of generated knowledge openly accessible and strengthens the foundation for further innovation, both within and outside of the framework of Nordic co-operation, says secretary general Dagfinn Høybråten in a statement.